On the occasion of its 2015 General Assembly on 23/24 April, ALLEA has issued a Joint Declaration "15 Years of Lisbon Agenda" on behalf of its nearly 60 member academies. The declaration appeals to the European Institutions and Member States to sufficiently undertake clear actions in order to achieve the aims of the Lisbon Agenda that still remain unfulfilled. In the course of ALLEA´s annual meeting, hosted by the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, the ALLEA President was unanimously re-elected by the ALLEA member academies for a second term in office.
ALLEA presented the Joint Declaration to the public at the closing of a Scientific Symposium on the topic "Science and Research in Europe – Past, Present and Future: 15 Years of Lisbon Agenda" which provided the thematic context for the declaration and aimed to identify what actions are still needed to create a knowledge-based economy, as set out in the Lisbon Agenda 15 years ago. The declaration appeals to the European Institutions and Member States to follow through on those actions that are needed in order to realise the Lisbon Agenda's ambitions, which are also incorporated into the current Europe 2020 strategy. It addresses aspects including the preservation of funding programmes, support for early career researchers, and inequalities that hinder competitiveness, among others. Please click here to view the full text of the Joint Declaration.
The Scientific Symposium was followed by the All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values prize ceremony, at which the European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, handed over the ALLEA prize to laureate Dame Helen Wallace of the British Academy.
At the annual meeting of ALLEA on 24 April the member academies of ALLEA unanimously voted to re-elect ALLEA President Professor Günter Stock for a second term (2015 – 2018). In a subsequent meeting, the ALLEA Board re-elected Professor Daniela Jezova of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Professor Ed Noort of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences as ALLEA Vice Presidents.
In addition to the elections, the ALLEA delegates voted to welcome a new ALLEA member, the Learned Society of the Czech Republic, and heard activity reports from the chairs of ALLEA working groups as well as a presentations of the activities and mission of Euro-CASE, the European Council of Applied Sciences Technologies and Engineering, delivered by its President Professor Reinhard Hüttl.
More information on the 2015 ALLEA General Assembly can be found here.
Finland was represented in the ALLEA General Assembly by the Council of Finnish Academies Secretary General Päivi Tikka and Council member, Chancellor emerita Krista Varantola.